tl;dr past Bitcoin forks were led by one or two people in Core, but Core is trying to wash its hands of fork leadership and that means nothing will happen.
Definitely an interesting thread to watch on twitter today. Lots of thoughtful responses.
Rough consensus is really rough. While I'm not an ossifier, I do think it's okay that Bitcoin is a mess. Probably I would feel differently if I worked in Bitcoin development. It sounds like a slog.
One compelling point James makes is that as more adoption occurs Bitcoin will get even harder to change, so it is possible that we should consider enacting some changes before too long (Great consensus cleanup?).
Whatever happens next in Bitcoin is going to be interesting.
194 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby 11h
Many things here are true, and yet bitcoin just works.
Bitcoin doesn't have to be perfect, just needs to be better than everything else.
Embrace the chaos, people trying to ascribe order to the ever changing spontaneous order like my friend @moneyball with the BCAP project will always be wrong :)
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bitcoin will not become extinct, unless the day is over, because bitcoin is increasingly becoming a trend among children, teenagers and adults, now many have learned to know bitcoin, but there are still some people who are still learning more about bitcoin.
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164 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 10h
i think if no one has any idea what the next step is, that’s a major problem that we have right now
it’s not Core’s “fault” in any meaningful way. it’s just that people are expecting Core to take leadership, and they won’t. but it’s not their “fault” that people expect that
people expect that because the decision makers used to be in Core, and now they aren’t
question here though: where are decision makers now? Steve Lee and co wrote a thing on that
128 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 11h
Consensus changes: always a leadership problem, never a "CI is failing and a rebase is needed" problem. Yet somehow, all 5 of the open PRs against core fail CI and 3/5 need rebase, and likewise 2/3 of the open PRs against inquisition fail CI.
146 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 10h
not actually reply to the OP but seems related...
2 yrs ago several Bitcoin Core devs & myself submitted PRs to remove mempoolfullrbf but we were told it isn't a controversial change, that this was merely giving users options, with the default "off."
Recently they changed the default to on, removing the option to turn it off🫠
102 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 6h
Bitcoin forks were led by one or two people in Core, but Core is trying to wash its hands of fork leadership and that means nothing will happen.
sounds like they are damned if they do, we are damned if they don't
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278 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 4h
Yeah, that may be why he called his post 'The Consensus Conundrum.' I've been trying to do a bit of introspection myself and figure out how I expect to see any future consensus changes to come about. I think I'm hoping that one set of changes becomes a clear front runner, meaning most people want it over the others. Of course, I realize I have never once expressed to anyone how I feel about any of the currently proposed changes. And it is probably similar for most bitcoiners. I don't feel like I have enough knowledge to express a worthwhile opinion on the topic. But then that means I'm waiting for some non-specific critical mass of Bitcoin personages to express support of one proposal...
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102 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 3h
I don't feel like I have enough knowledge to express a worthwhile opinion on the topic. But then that means I'm waiting for some non-specific critical mass of Bitcoin personages to express support of one proposal...
same problem here, but I'm planning to at least take some base58 courses soon
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